OUR FEATHERED FRIENDS

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 253, 4 March 1911, Page 3

OUR FEATHERED FRIENDS

(By "Coek-o'-the-Xorth"). The housing of poultry plays a very important part in the making (or the reverse) of the yearly profit. I remember some years ago when travellingoii poultry business in Xorth Otago visiting a man who kept fowls and who was intending to embark in the business. When I got there it was evening (in June), and he took me to see his birds. He had housed them in one of those large barrels used for packing crockery, some four feet long by 2ft (iin in diameter. He told me that he had read in some book that they made a good fowlhouse, and very probably he had. What he had utterly failcd"to read was the number of birds to put in it, and how to lit it up. What he had actually done was to knock both ends out of'the barrel, put in two short perches, less than 3ft each, and put 30 birds to roost in it. The roosts were packed, and the space under them as well/ or, at least, that portion underneath which was not filled with the manure, which came up to within an inch or so of the perches. It had been raining during the day, and the birds, wet and draggled, were huddled up as close as they could pack themselves for warmth, 'with a bitterly cold southerly wind blowing in one end "of the* barrel and ont of the other. He told roe that the birds were..supposed to be' from a heavy laying strain, and the eggs had cost him 10s (id per dozen for 100 eggs, out of which he had raised the birds I was looking at, arid exclaimed: "They are frauds; they are 1 nearly eight months old and have not'laid aii egg."

Well, readers, I told him something that he badly wanted telling, in as cutting a way as 1 could, and 'when I left him made sure 1 had added one more to the list of my enemies, but some fifteen months later, on passing that way, I was very agreeably surprised that my rather blunt way of speaking had done good, for he had three really decent houses with 25 birds to the house (daughters of those 1 had previously seen), looking scrupulously clean and sleek, which he told me had been laying heavily since the previous April. One thing is vital in any poultry house, and that is an abundance of fresh air, but here a fatal mistake often occurs by mistaking draught for ventilation, and thus laying the foundation of many diseases. Take the case of a human being over-heated by physical exertion.! Cooling off in the open air does not hurt him, but if he sit in a room near a win-J (low, open about half-an-inch, with an] open door on the other side of him, it often means death, and very nearly always means sickness. That is the" difference between fresh air and draught. The size and structure of the house, of course, depends a good deal on the way it is intended tu run the birds. A farmer, for instance, who grows a ' good deal of grain, when he reaps this and probably threshes it in the same paddock, leaves a vast amount of grain food,'seeds and insects (which as a rule go to feed the sparrows) there, and if the same farmer had a few houses, say Oft by 12ft, built on two runners in the form of a I sledge, he could put a good few laying birds in the paddock, which, if supplied with grit and water, would practically feed themselves, and turn the grain, grit, etc., into money instead of providing'the means whereby the gay and festive'sparrow lives well till the next year's crops, etc., are in, when he bleeds" the farmer again. On the other hand, there are scores of persons who keep just nine or a dozen in the town or suburbs to whom such a house would be useless. If these persons have sufficient ground to give a grass run, the house should be large enough to give at least five square feet of space on this floor to each bird, so that they may be confined and kept busy on cold wet days. 1 remember once reading the description of a poultry house by a man considered to be one of the foremost poultry men of his day (in a book he had written) where he gave for six birds, as the smallest space consistent with good egg production, a house 4ft square by 4ft high, and for twenty birds a house lift square and lift j high, that while he considered l(i square, feet (on the lloor) or 2%ft per bird, | sullicient space for them in the first l house, he allowed in the second house I only about 1 4-5 square feet per bird, lie might say that he had allowed another 2ft in height, but had he made Si (ifift higher that would he worth nothing, for the simple reason that the domestic fowl does not take its exercise by Hying through the air, but by scratching on (he floor. Hence it is on"the Hour, not in the air, that the space is wanted.

JOTTINGS. None should start poultry farming without practical experience is the advice given by some poultry Solomons, but if one does not start, whence is he to get the practical experience? Remember yuur water supply. The egg is 75 per cent, water, anil if you want a wholesome dainty egg give clean, sweet water.

There are two ways of forcing ugg production: one by healthy stimulation and the other by unhealthy over irritation. Charcoal should be before the birds at all times, as it is one of the best preventatives for bowel troubles in existence.

A hen is apt to sicken of the same kind of food just as a human being would if he had to face eternal roast beef, though at the_oiitset he might have been very fond of it. Yet if lie were compelled 'to cat it alone he would positively bate it in a very short time. So. with'the fowl. If you want eggs tempt her appetite, and you can only do this perfectly by giving variety of food occasionally. '